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The Fort Worth City Council will consider a number of updates to its economic development policies next week, including adoption of a formal policy for innovation districts.
The proposed updates include revisions to the city’s general tax abatement, an update to the Economic Development Program (or 380 program), and TIF policies. Fort Worth is also considering adopting guiding policies for the Economic Development Initiatives Fund.
The City Council was presented an informal report by staff at a work session on Tuesday.
No council member made comment.
The proposed update would formalize innovation districts in within the city. Currently, there is no clear policy outlining innovation districts, a term that is becoming increasingly common in city programs, in the state or in local governments.
Innovation districts are specific geographic areas where leading-edge anchor institutions and companies cluster and connect with startups, business incubators, accelerators, and producers of marketable intellectual property, according to city staff. Much talk recently has been centered around the planned Texas A&M-Fort Worth campus as a coming “innovation district.”
The new policy would establish two innovation districts, the Fort Worth Mobility Innovation Zone in the Alliance Airport corridor and the Fort Worth Medical Innovation District on the South Side.
The updated guidelines would also define sub-district geographies, described as “Nodes of Innovation,” that share the “characteristics of an innovation district but at a smaller scale and that can be established independently or in relation to a specific innovation district.”
Three were tabbed as Nodes of Innovation, the Texas A&M School of Law, The University of North Texas Health Science Center, and the University of Texas at Arlington Research Institute.
The proposed tax abatement policy updates include an increase in new employee salary, to $55,000 from $42,300, on a given project. There would also be a requirement to demonstrate that 30% of those employees are Fort Worth residents on any project that employs 10 or more people.
City staff is also recommending adoption of a policy to formally establish and guide the Economic Development Initiatives Fund, which was designed to bolster funding for economic development initiatives, including deal closing.
Proposed policy describes funding across two primary categories, programmatic funding and reserved funding. Programmatic funding would support the needs of sustained programs and initiatives and will also include funding used for outside partnerships, marketing, and program administration. Reserved funding refers to the use of certain funds deposited in the Economic Development Initiatives Fund for project deal closing.
Updates to the city’s TIF policy include guidance for funds after the TIF expires, including depositing them into the Economic Development Initiatives Fund and tax rate reduction.